


Pigs We Get What Pigs Deserve

by Eisenschrott



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Eventual Smut, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past Relationship(s), Unrequited Crush
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-10-05 10:56:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17323718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eisenschrott/pseuds/Eisenschrott
Summary: Moff Jerjerrod does not get along well with the new commander of the work-in-progress second Death Star's infantry. The feeling is mutual. Somehow, they provoke each other into an ill-advised entanglement while the battle of Endor looms closer and closer.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Captain Feste and Jerjerrod's ex wife are [Bunn1cula](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bunn1cula/pseuds/Bunn1cula)'s OCs; I'm just taking them out for a ride and I apologise from the get-go, for it will be a _bumpy_ ride. I just can't do smooth flying. Speaking of flying, this specific flight of fic fancy is expected to update at an even more glacial pace than usual; also, I don't know what I'm doing and where I'm going. So, uhh, don't buckle up too tight, I guess?
> 
> Title from _Last_ by Nine Inch Nails.

Moff Jerjerrod’s desk holoterminal beeped for, approximately, the thousandth time during that rotation. Without sparing a look at the comm console, he slammed his palm over the audio button and kept squinting at the Aurebesh soup his overworked eyesight presented him on the datapad. “Yes?” he drawled, long past bothering to hide his sour mood.

Whoever was at the other end of the comm was another contributing factor to it, anyway.

“This is General Veers, sir,” answered the clipped masculine voice of the Death Star’s brand-new ground commander, fresh off Hoth and the stars knew how many victory fetes. “I have completed my first tour of the installations on the Forest Moon. And we need to discuss my findings.”

Jerjerrod rolled his eyes, which scrambled the letters on the datapad to an even more unreadable blur. Within ten standard minutes since setting foot on the Death Star’s docking bay earlier in the rotation, the newcomer had requisitioned a shuttle to fly moonside and surprise-inspect the ground contingent. Jerjerrod hadn’t had the time to be annoyed that Veers had not, first thing first, shown up at his office for introductions. “ _He lives up to his fame as a toiler”_ , he’d commented to Captain Feste, his aide-de-camp. “ _More power to him. He will feel at home here_.”

“Very good, General,” Jerjerrod said, allowing his eyes to close. Letters and numbers danced against the back of his eyelids in a phantasmagoria of production statistics. “Send in a report as soon as you have it ready and we will go over it at tomorrow’s midday briefing.” It had to be _today_ ’s midday briefing by now.

“The less we wait, the better, sir. I am on my way to your office.”

Jerjerrod frowned without opening his eyes. “That’s out of the question, General. I have too much work right now.”

“So does the garrison of Camp Romodi, as they risk being overrun and massacred by the natives at any moment.”

“The garrison of _what_?” Jerjerrod bit his lower lip, cursing himself for the lapse in his memory and for letting the gaffe slip out aloud.

Just as he expected, Veers bristled at his precious bucketheads being forgotten. “Camp Romodi, sir. The Army installation on the southern continent, five klicks west of Bay Mern-738. Does it ring a bell?”

“I do not appreciate your tone, General—” He broke off as he heard Captain Feste’s voice outside the door of his office, then footsteps. The door slid open and a tall, mud-caked figure in battle armor and forest camo cloak strode in with a befuddled Feste in tow.

Jerjerrod curled back a bit into his chair as Veers locked his eyes onto him and towered over the stacks of datapads cluttering the desk. The helmet he was carrying under his left arm bore scratch marks that Jerjerrod, and every Imperial in the Endor system, knew by now Ewok lances could all too easily leave on durasteel. To say nothing of the gashes they left on Human flesh.

Veers’ right hand moved to his side, hooking a comlink to his belt. “As I was saying, sir, the matter is urgent. Waiting is out of the question.”

“How did you get in?” Jerjerrod realized a moment too late how kriffing daft that question sounded. The effects of the last caf pot he’d had earlier—how long ago, he couldn’t tell anymore—were wearing off.

“Through the door,” said Veers, his face a mask of durasteel. With a sneer that seemed to come naturally to his large, thin mouth.

Behind the general’s broad shoulders, Captain Feste peeked at Jerjerrod, keeping a few paces away from Veers. “I apologize for not notifying you of General Veers’ arrival, sir,” he said, bland and professional, while casting a glare of disgust at Veers and arching an eyebrow like Jerjerrod’s mother whenever a poorly dressed sentient entered her field of vision. “He went in too fast.”

Veers’ composure slipped for a sideways blinking glance at Feste, whose face had straightened back into the picture-perfect junior officer’s utter lack of expression.

Jerjerrod struggled not to smirk. “Not a problem, Captain. General…” He sighed quietly, regretting his mouth and larynx weren’t full of comforting smoke. Fine Shento cigars had been his lifelong favorites, but these days his survival depended on cheap state-manufactured cigarettes. “What is it that can’t wait until the briefing, then?”

“Everything, Moff Jerjerrod. Every single blasted thing dirt-side.”

“Well, that’s a wide range of possibilities.” Not that Jerjerrod disagreed. He just felt more pressure about every single blasted thing going jogan-shaped all the time here in the vac. Several atmospheres’ worth of pressure.

“All the key installations are vulnerable to attack, including the shield generator compound,” Veers plowed on, impermeable to sarcasm. “We are losing an average of a stormtrooper company per rotation to a primitive, barely sentient species of natives—”

Jerjerrod’s head shot up. “Are you implying the Ewoks are better soldiers than Imperial stormtroopers?” There it was, his chance to cut this conversation short and send Veers away with his tail between his legs.

The general’s eyes widened for a moment, then hardened with outrage.

“You surprise me, General, and not in positive. I expected better from a hero of your renown.”

“What I’d like to _imply_ , sir, is that we need better equipment and more troops—”

“You will wage this war with the soldiers and means at your disposal. And trust the Empire to provide _exactly_ what you need.” Damn, it was hard not to burst out laughing. He leaned across the desk toward Veers, hoping his breath wouldn’t send the stacks of datapads tumbling down like houses of cards. “Do you not trust the Empire, perhaps? Hmm?”

Veers opened his mouth and drew in a breath, then shut it tight. He exhaled with a hiss through his nose, rolling his shoulders. “Of course I do, sir,” he growled.

A lump of fear accreted in Jerjerrod’s empty stomach. He darted a look at Feste for reassurance. It worked; the captain, still behind Veers in a safe blind spot, was giving the enraged hero his smuggest grin.

“Very well, then,” Jerjerrod continued. “Faith is all you need. Dismissed, General. I’ll hear the details tomorrow, 09:30 Standard Time. You may circulate a memo beforehand, but I can’t promise I will find the time to read it.”

Veers stood still and quiet, a statue of repressed anger. For all he knew he’d won the argument, Jerjerrod’s skin started to crawl under the big man’s glowering eyes.

“Is this your best tough guy impression?” Veers sneered, his stare on Jerjerrod making its best barrel-of-a-loaded-blaster impression. “Pitiful.”

It was Jerjerrod’s turn to be taken aback. He blinked as he went stiff in his chair like a lothcat in a speeder’s lights.

“The entire fleet knows you’re but a flimsi-pushing—”

“General,” Feste intervened, peremptory enough for Veers to aim his glare at him. Feste withstood it with an impeccable sabacc face. “I respectfully remind you the Moff outranks you. And that faith in the Empire extends to faith in _him_.”

“You don’t need to remind me how a chain of command works, Captain,” Veers said. Churlish, but not growling.

“I am sure we don’t.”

“Of bloody course not.” Veers turned to give Jerjerrod a curt saluting bow and a final murderous look, and stomped out of the room.

Jerjerrod slumped back on the chair. “Nine buggering hells.”

“I’m sorry, sir. I should have stopped him before he barged in.”

“The Ewok that took aim at his helmet should have stopped him first.” Jerjerrod rifled through the datapads until he felt up the cigarettes pack in the interstice between two stacks. He pulled it out and was relieved to find it still contained two cigs and the lighter. “You put him back in his place, though. That was much appreciated.” He looked up at Feste with a smile, which the captain returned. Feste beamed, in fact. It was endearing how he could be content with so little—and damn, he had been ballsy and deserved the praise.

“Thank you, sir.” Feste slid something from behind another pile of datapads. “Shall I empty it first?” It was Jerjerrod’s ashtray, a rectangle of prized Tinnelian narwhal horn full with cigarette butts to the brim.

Jerjerrod made a dismissive grunt, chucked the content of the ashtray down the garbage chute behind his desk, and lit up a new cig. He offered the last one and the lighter to Feste.

“I was expecting Veers to be a toiler,” Jerjerrod said, the satisfied crave for nicotine easing his nerves a bit. “And something of a blockhead.”

“I think you mean _bucket_ head, sir.”

“There is hardly a difference.”

Feste laughed, smoke trickling out of his nostrils.

“However,” Jerjerrod went on, “this was… insulting. Insubordinate, almost.”

“I hear he dislikes Navy folks, which is what all Army folks do, but this might be a special case.”

“He served under Admiral Ozzel until three standard weeks ago. That’s the special case for you.”

“Was that bloke really as bad as the rumor mill painted him?”

“More so.”

“Stars.” Feste flicked the burnt part of his cig into the ashtray. “But that makes it a very unfair comparison to you, sir.”

“Thank you.” The warmth in Jerjerrod’s heart surprised even him. He balanced it out with sarcasm, “At least Ozzel had combat experience. I am, as Veers was about to elegantly put it, a flimsi-pusher who didn’t even attend military school.”

“There is nothing wrong with it, sir. Plenty of celebrated frontline heroes would have already blown their brains out if they worked as hard and as _well_ as you’re doing here.”

“Aeryk, you flattering bastard, where would I be without you?”

“In the morgue, with a plasma bolt hole in your clever head.”

Jerjerrod laughed. A small part of him wondered if his sense of humor had always been this macabre, and a smaller yet wondered if Ailsa would still care if he did blast his brains out; his marriage was a case closed enough he could answer himself with a _no_ and not experience sorrow about it. He took one last, deep drag, focusing on the tarry taste and itchy feel of the smoke billowing in his throat, then snuffed the cigarette butt into the ashtray.

Feste did the same with his cig. “I finished reading through the life support maintenance reports just before Veers showed up. I’ll whip up a digest in a few minutes, but the gist of it is, it’s nothing we can do much about on our own. Except,” he rolled his eyes, “send in requests for spare parts.”

“Indeed, and Tatooine will freeze over in the meantime. What’s the worst bit?”

“Water recycle mains. The techs expect imminent breakdowns across the whole northern hemisphere.”

“Shit. At least it’s not a disaster we haven’t faced before.”

“In fact, I have taken the liberty to set up the hydrotanks and a surface-to-space collection roster. We won’t run out of drinkable water, but showers will have to be set to sonic only for a while.”

“A bearable burden.” While Jerjerrod spoke the words, a craving for a long, warm and soapy bath raked his dry skin in worn-too-long clothes, pinched at his stiff joints and aching back. Absent-mindedly he picked up the cig pack, his fingertips touched nothing inside it and he remembered it was empty. The burden of life felt a few kilograms less bearable again. “Well, you are dismissed for now. Finish up your work and get some sleep.”

“Will you get some, too, sir?”

Jerjerrod waved the empty pack at him. “It’s an order, Captain. Mind your orders and yours alone.”

“Yes, sir. But you try to rest.” Feste started towards the door; Jerjerrod caught a concerned look on his face. Rather unbecoming of a Navy officer, but it was one of the small mercies for which Jerjerrod could still thank the Force.

Feste slowed down to gaze at the floor. “Uh, I’ll send in a mouse droid to clean up here.”

“Clean up what…?” Jerjerrod had to stand up to look above the datapads. It took him a few seconds to connect the mud on General Veers’ uniform, and the dried-up footprints that dotted the floor from the desk to the doorway. “Son of a Hutt!”


	2. Chapter 2

On his way to his quarters, Veers steeled his nerves and clenched his fists tight in order not to draw his blaster and unload its whole power cell in the face of the first sentient who crossed his path. It was a greater success than routing the Rebels on Hoth.

  
Nine Huttfucking hells. He had not expected Moff Jerjerrod to be anything other than an annoying Navy toff, mediocre at best at his job, with enough ego to mistake himself for this generation’s Pers kriffing Pradeux. As it turned out, the Moff was even worse. _Faith is all you need_. Veers gritted his teeth so hard they ached.

  
At one point he had to cross over a half-constructed gangway, lined with rickety guardrails, overlooking a flight deck for heavy cargo ships. A hundred meters below, the Human and droid deck crew was busy extracting crushed debris from the soot-black center of a crater, over ten meters wide. Veers didn’t want to know what had caused it.

  
What he did know was, how much better for the Empire it would have been if the troops and droids manning this half-munched juicemelon of quadanium and kyber crystals had been put to good use, in useful stations. Like the fleet, or the army.

  
Fuck, he was nervous and couldn’t resist. Veers peered over from the guardrail and shouted, “Stop dallying around that hole and get back to work!” A booming echo carried his voice all the way down, and the Human crewmembers flinched.

  
He stomped away feeling like a petty idiot. Admiral Ozzel would have gotten a kick out of bullying low-level tars, but Veers’ bad mood just sank further down towards the space station’s reactor core.

  
Wisely, every officer, stormtrooper, tech, astromech or security droid that shared a portion of corridor or turbolift ride with him kept their trap shut and stepped as far away from him as maneuver room permitted. Their stares prickled on the back of his head, despite the helmet he’d put back on. His right forefinger itched for the blaster trigger.

  
His new living quarters welcomed him at last, resembling every bit the ones he’d occupied aboard the _Executor_. The crate with his personal belongings was at its usual place at the foot of the bed, where the regulations required it to be.

  
One pace past the closed door, he stood still. Considered hurling the helmet to the floor, testing if the impact could open a crater on the floor. His eyes fell to his mud-caked boots, then to his dirt-splattered trousers, tunic and cuirass. The gestures of stripping out of the dirtside regalia came to him as mechanical as disassembling and reassembling a blaster blindfolded, like when he was a cadet. The armor parts went down their own cleaning unit chute, the fabric (not forgetting to remove the code cylinders and the rank badge beforehand; it could cost a distracted officer an audit from the ISB these days) into another—which did not budge when he tried it. He wrapped his muddy clothes around his fist and punched the flap with his full force; the bloody thing finally creaked open to eat up his uniform. The smell that wafted from the laundry chute was almost as bad as the stench of blaster-singed Ewok fur. Veers wouldn’t have been surprised if a dianoga infestation had been going on down there.

  
Ignoring the aches of old injuries that awoke in the cool recycled air, he sat on the side of the bed, pulled his boots off, and opened the crate to rummage for the cleaning kit. Damn him if he was going to throw away a pair of comfortable footwear over some mud; his legs were getting a bit old and pained for new boots. Or rather, the army didn’t make them this good anymore. Supplies quality had been free-falling for quite a while.

  
“Shut up,” he muttered to his own mind. Focusing on the boots, the rag and the dry mud gave him long, blessed minutes of calming monotony. Every now and then, he would stray back to his first meeting with his new commander and his new commander’s pet momong, and his hand would scrub harder.

  
A little more scrubbing with the wetted rag, a final pass of polish, and his boots seemed ready for the parade ground. The image of his son in a lieutenant’s brand-new uniform, boots dusty and hair always a bit too long even on graduation day, snuck past his shields before he could intercept it and blast it away.

  
His hands went still, the boot and the polish sponge feeling less tangible than an instant before. It was hard to believe in a reality where his son had… done what he had done.

  
Veers’ eyes darted to the crate, then back at his boot as soon as they spotted the holodisc, lying provocatively in plain sight on top of his folded spare clothes. _Don’t do this, idiot. Don’t._ Slowly, he put the boot and the sponge down and reached for the holodisc in the crate.

  
_Throw it to the floor and crush it, come on,_ he told himself as he rose and went to the holoterminal on the desk. _You would do yourself a favor_. As if he deserved favors.

  
He inserted the disc into the terminal, sat down, and played the content of the disc. He’d watched it so many times he knew every glitch of the hologram by heart. It still didn’t lessen the gut punch as soon as Zev’s blueish full-body ghost in shabby civvies sprang to life on the projector, casting glances over each shoulder before fixing his eyes forward.

  
“ _My name is Zevulon Veers,_ ” the young man in the hologram said, a tremor in his voice. “ _My homeworld is Denon. I was commissioned a lieutenant in the Imperial Navy at the academy on Prefsbelt. My father is General Maximilian Veers, Imperial Army. I… I am a Rebel. A member of the Rebel Alliance.”_

  
Just like every other time since Captain Ronnadam had first shown him this propaganda message another ISB officer had forwarded from Prefsbelt, Veers’ heart crumpled as if it were a sheet of flimsi in a Wookiee’s paws. It hurt. And the hurt, physical hurt, spread to his whole chest. He gripped the edge of the desk with both hands, while a lopsided grin spread on the young man’s face. Veers couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen such a big smile on Zev’s face.

  
“ _I cannot tell you where I defected and how I did it, but you can rest assured it was the best decision of my life_.”

  
Ronnadam had told him the details. Zev had gone AWOL during a routine patrol on Manaan four standard months ago. Nobody at the time had notified Veers because Zev, in his personal databank entry, had not listed any next-of-kin he wished to inform of his death or injury in the line of duty.

  
“ _I don’t have much time and I don’t really know what to say, but…_ ” A short laugh, shy and vibrant. Zev cleared his throat. “ _This one’s for every cadet out there who’s feeling like they’ve made a huge mistake joining the Empire. Or like they’ve been dragged into something they never wanted to be a part of, or had no other choice. I know how it feels._ ”

  
Listening over and over again to that bit, Veers had learned to float along with the tide of memories—Zev shouting at him in an adolescent cracking voice that made it hard not to laugh; kicking around the bedroom the duffel bag he was supposed to pack his personal belongings into; spitting on his father’s uniform, and Veers’ own field of vision reddening, his fists clenching.

  
They didn’t truly affect him anymore. Just awoke a panicked beast clawing at the pit of his stomach, which he had learned to ignore.

  
“ _I know it’s utter shit. You want to scream and to tear everything down, but you’ve got to bury that—that inner voice, your sense of justice, the best part of you, deep, deep down inside…_ ” Zev’s expression dimmed as he blathered. He resembled his mother so much when he looked wistful. “ _That’s another precious thing the Empire takes away from you, from all of us, our integrity, our ability to think and look at evil and see it for what it is, and say no to it. Scream that no if you have to, and… and you do have to. Think of Alderaan, Lasan, Mimban, Kashyyyk, Riosa—sorry, what?_ ” According to the ISB’s vocal recognition experts, the grumble that interrupted Zev’s delirious tirade was Talzzi, saying something about running out of time. “ _Oh, okay, right. Look, whoever is listening, the point is, you are not a lost cause._ ” Zev pointed his finger on a listener whom he very definitely presumed was not the Hero of Hoth. “ _You can escape this nightmare, help destroy it, you can change things for the better. Don’t lose hope, don’t lose yourself to the Empire. Join the Rebellion. Resist._ ”

  
The holorecord ended here. Perhaps Zev was about to say something else, but it was far more than enough already. Pointless, rambling propaganda drivel, posted on the HoloNet intranet of the Prefsbelt academy among stashes of pornographic material—the best places to make sure cadets would stumble onto it, to be fair. It was also _heartfelt_ propaganda drivel. Veers did not need the ISB’s enlightened opinion to notice that.

  
Absent-mindedly, he pressed a button on the terminal and the hologram sprang to life again. The words droned by. Stars, Zev did look a lot like his mother. She would have been so disappointed with him, so devastated. Would she have blamed her husband, at least in part? Blamed the Empire, too? Of course, Zev’s instructors at the academy had been investigated; Ronnadam had spoken at length about _eradicating the weakness that allows treason to fester undetected_. Veers did not care about them; may they rot away on Kessel or face the firing squad, paying the fair price for their carelessness. It was already too late for Zev anyway. During the few days between his arrest—how thoughtful of the ISB to confine him to his quarters rather than to a cell in the brig, unbecoming of the Hero of Hoth that the Press Corps was raving about until a day prior—and his transfer out of Death Squadron, Veers had had much time for thinking. Too much of it, almost turning his mind to mush. Doing push-ups had kept him sane. But he had never been able to sweat away the thought that, somewhere down the line, Zev’s betrayal had been his fault.

  
A foolish thought. Foolish and dangerous. He knew damn well blaming himself for the loss of comrades in battle was pointless, unhealthy. Why should losing someone to desertion be any different?

  
Barely listening to the words, he refocused his eyes on the hologram. So much like his mother. A grown man making his own terrible choices, and at the same time a confused, angry boy who had needed guidance, correction, safety, to save himself from... from himself?

  
“ _Look, whoever is listening, the point is, you are not a lost cause,_ ” said the hologram. Veers gazed at it, imagining a platoon of stormtroopers, a hail of green blaster fire, the boy sagging to his knees. It was not a revenge fantasy; it was a realistic outcome. Never failed to twist a knot in Veers’ guts, as if he could feel the blaster bolts charring his own flesh.

  
His breathing rate and pulse quickened as the hologram played to the end, silence hanging heavy in the room like the putrid smell from the laundry chute. Would he get a weird, ominous feeling the instant Zev died? Eliana had once told him one of her friends had had a sudden, unexplainable fright one day, and a few hours later there was an Imperial Navy communiqué in her inbox about her wife, killed in action in the Ryloth sector.

  
Veers frowned at the memory. Had Eliana ever told that story to Zev? Anger and outrage and dread flared at her, followed by a rolling wave of disgust at himself, for doubting her. And yet… _Yet nothing. She had more sense than that. She was never a traitor, ever_. But the conversation had happened. In hushed tones, in the living room; he remembered two caf cups on the table, and Eliana always liked to have a short, dark, far too strong caf after lunch. Zev was not keen on eavesdropping, but he did keep his senses sharp and picked up on a lot of cues when both his parents were home. At the time he had to be… Veers didn’t remember how old exactly. _You’re getting bloody old yourself, Max_. Well, not older than seven, eight—

  
“Stop thinking!” Veers scolded himself, louder than he meant to. The snap of his voice in the empty room startled him a bit. He drew in a few deep breaths, trying to steady the drumming rhythm of his heart; hells, the stink had not faded away yet, what in blazes was wrong with the ventilation system?

  
Not all the stink came from the garbage chute, however. He lifted an arm, sniffed himself under the armpit, and grimaced. A plan of action formed in his mind, nice and clear: shower first. Then compose that report for Moff Jerk-jerrod. He smirked at the pun, even allowed himself to wish he were younger and far more stupid, enough to misspell the Moff’s name on purpose in the report and then claim it had been a typo.

  
Well, there were stupid sentients aplenty in the galaxy, starting from whoever thought entrusting a Death Star to Jerjerrod was a good idea. No need to add more idiocy to the heap.

  
Veers got to his feel, stretched his arms, and took off his underclothes. As he tapped, then shoved the laundry chute flap, the bloody thing remained stuck but the smell still seeped up from the bowels of the plumbing. After one final, pointless punch at the flap, Veers balled up his underclothes and stomped off to the fresher, his skin crawling, body hair standing, and joints aching.

  
He set the shower to water stream rather than sonic, set the temperature to thirty-eight degrees, and stepped inside the cubicle with the lump of underclothes in his hands. It’d been a while since last time he’d had to do his own laundry while bathing—since a recon operation on Raydonia, if memory served him right; there was nothing on that planet but fluorescent plants, the ruins of a settlement massacred by the Jedi during the Clone Wars, and a creek not far from the base camp.

  
The sensor on the showerhead blinked green. There was a gurgling noise somewhere inside the wall, but no water streamed out.

  
“For kriff’s sake…” Veers tapped on the showerhead and slid his hand a couple times over the sensor. The gurgle grew louder, and a jet of warm, over-chlorinated water slapped him hard in the face. He barely had the time to shrink to the corner of the cubicle, when some pipe inside the wall made a crashing noise and the water sputtered to a halt.

  
Veers and the showerhead glared at each other in silence for a few seconds. The general’s scowl twisted into a look of horror as dark, foul-smelling droplets began trickling out of the showerhead.

  
He ran out of the ‘fresher, yanked a clean uniform out of the crate, and commed the maintenance crew while he dressed back up, his voice loud enough they might bloody well be hearing him to wherever their karking deck of incompetent bums was.


End file.
